f1316 wrote: ↑08 Jan 2024, 00:14
Why is that interesting? It makes me wonder how much, for all the additional tools that current F1 aerodynamicists have at their disposal, there’s still no substitute for experience. Indeed, you wonder if these tools almost remove folks’ need to develop and refine their “instinct” (for want of a better word) and so modern aerodynamicists aren’t able to reach the level of their counterparts from bygone eras because they’ve never been forced to take the same learnings without the assistance of such refined technical tools?
Perhaps it’s more a question of these two just being two of the all-time greats - and so more the exception than the rule - and you could argue that Mercedes recent dominance was built without any such figure, but it’s a interesting to me how much two of the top F1 teams seem to rely so much on a couple of fairly old men.
The thing with the two of them, they are both engineers who are deeply intuitive when it comes to race car dynamics. So not just aero, suspension, engine, etc, but how the whole car works and breathes as a living thing. Andi76 said once "Rory knew how a scraped left corner on the front wing would affect right rear wheel nut" and that's not really a big exaggeration
I am completely sure
all the teams have aero departments that can individually design monstrous aerodynamics if it has to work only at one single ride height, suspension departments that can design the system to drive a soft tyre for a full race distance, mechanical department that can design lightweight and bulletproof gearboxes that last a full season, etc... However, everything needs to mix well and work together as a single unified system
at all times and that bit is really, really challenging. With these cars, making the aero work well requires a suspension system that is designed fully around the aero map. This is the case for a long time, but since 2022 is more important than ever. All teams understand this, but tiny details and tricks of the trade can and do make huge differences.